Phil of the Future: Double Phil
by Thor2000
Summary: While Phil tries to help Lloyd fix the time machine, he accidentally yanks his middleaged self out of the future and learns what the future hold for him when he gets home.
1. Chapter 1

Pickford was located in the mid-state route from Chicago, Illinois to St. Louis, Missouri. Bounded by farms and woodland, it was just one of numerous picturesque cities that seemed to come from out of the artwork of Norman Rockwell. It looked like the quintessential Hollywood back-lot representation of suburban America with perfectly manicured yards, kids playing in the park, old timers sitting and talking before the local barber shop and a steady flow of traffic from a mix of different cars reflecting the personalities of their drivers. The town had a lot to be proud of. The Harvest Festival was coming up and a new restraunt was opening in town. The city council was going to turn the old elementary school into a museum after the new school was built. Old Historical Stoddard House, a local reputed haunted house, stood at the end of Stoddard Park in the more affluent part of town. Postal carrier Gary Manoux traveled walked down Auburn Drive and dropped off the mail for the Buckner family. Looking up, he waved hello to Raviv and Alyson Ullman, one of a few Jewish families on his route, but Manoux slowed his step as he neared the Diffy house. There was something odd about this family he just couldn't figure out. Objects vanished and appeared here, things flew over their house, a weird relative lurked the neighborhood clad in animal skins and the daughter was always promising to get even with the world. Slowly leaving the Diffy's their mail, Manoux heard another explosion from the ranch-style house and fled down the street. His cousin didn't have the problems he had delivering mail to that Munster Family in Mockingbird Heights, California.

"Lloyd, do you have to do that on the kitchen table?" Barbara Diffy was a raven-haired beauty with the grace of adulthood and the complexity of a young girl. She had fallen in love with and married Lloyd Diffy because he was romantic and could make her laugh. She didn't care that his hair had slightly receded or that he didn't have the body of a Greek god anymore, but if he forgot to leave the toilet seat down again, she was going to kill him! Lloyd just looked up with his round brown eyes obscured behind magnifying goggles and grinned his "aw shucks" smile. He tilted back the goggles on his head.

"Barb," He spoke with a masterful tone of knowledgeable intellect to his voice merged with a knack for comedic undertone. "I am so close to getting the dimensional interface unit rebuilt. Once it's done, I'll be that much more closer to getting us back to our own time and getting back our money on it."

"So, that's why you've been taking so long fixing the time machine." Barbara Diffy made that face that showed she was upset. "You're trying to get your security deposit back on this thing!" They had been stranded in the past that was now 2005 for about two years. Their kids were putting up with the situation as best as possible wearing these out of style clothes and pretending to be average kids despite their high I.Q's. The school lessons in this time were so easy and not much of a challenge for two teens used to five-dimensional physics and accelerated tenth level calculus. Resembling a young version of Donny Osmond with a small trace of the boyish charm of James Dean, Phil Diffy quickly acclimated to this time period with the help of local beauty Keely Teslow who looked pretty much how he figured a young Marilyn Monroe would look and behave. Unlike Marilyn, Keely was a renaissance woman in her own right. She could be forceful and determined and unwillingly to conform to any female stereotype. Phil treated her as an equal and as a confidante and she appreciated that from him by keeping his secret. That secret made her feel special to her regardless of this time on earth when women were expected to live down their potential.

Phil's sister was another person altogether. Almost attractive with her baby doll blue eyes and long blonde hair, Pim Diffy was both frustrated by this time period yet intrigued by its devotion to materialism. She knew how to manipulate others to get her way and she wasn't afraid to say what she thought. Everyone around her, even her own family, could be used to get what she wanted and what she wanted was power over her future. She wanted all she could get, but Phil was the nail that flattened her car tire on the drive to dominating all that she could see. Somewhere in Pim, Phil was sure the sister he once had was still there, but the more ruthless she became, he slowly realized she was no longer the young girl he once knew.

"Hi, dad…" Pim stood at the kitchen table and leaned over it to stare down her father over the dimensional interface unit. "Playing with your tinker toys?"

"Pim," Lloyd looked up to his daughter and longer for the days she couldn't talk. "I'm trying to fix the time machine so we can back to the present, er, I mean, the future. I'm almost positive that if I could align the signals in the dimensional interface unit that I'll be that much more closer to fixing it."

"Dad," Phil turned round from the refrigerator with a glass of orange juice. "Didn't you say the same thing when you over-hauled the drive for the flex capacitor?" Pim took his orange juice while he made a face and turned to pour another glass.

"Phil, this isn't nuclear physics…" Lloyd made a face of his own. "Well, technically it is…. But it's a step-by-step process. I have to be careful or else we could blow up the whole neighborhood. We're sitting on the Twentieth Century's version of a miniaturized nuclear reactor."

"Is that a two-headed squirrel?" Barbara looked out the kitchen window.

"Dad, look…" Phil sipped his juice and picked up a phase inducer. "Just take off the catalytic converter and route the port around to the causality generator. It's basically just an appendix. You don't need it."

"Phil," Lloyd rolled his eyes. "It's there for a reason. I'm quite sure the Time Variance Authority wouldn't install anything that they didn't need."

"But they don't need to know…" Phil started altering connections. "We just need to get home and then we can put it back. In fact, I'm sure it will work a lot better without…." There was a hiss from the dimensional interface unit and an odd droning from the device. Phil jumped back and Lloyd dropped his jaw just as a shimmering energy field flung itself from the component. It looked like a glimmer of pocketed air. Through it, the color in the room was more vibrant like the image through a gasoline vapor. The energy field floated up unfettered and uncontained and wafted up into the room.

"Great!" Lloyd lightly held on to the dimensional interface unit while looked nervously round the room in abject fear. "Phil, you just unleashed a causality field in the house!"

"A what?" Pim's eyes rolled around the room for something she couldn't see.

"A causality field." Phil nervously reached into the air around the dimensional interface unit with his father for the wayward field. "It's a field of dimensional energy linking two areas in time and space. The time machine works by opening and containing the field wild enough for it to carry us through…"

"And it only stays open until something passes through it from this side or the side its linked." Lloyd reached looking for the energy field and sniffed for new scents wafting from another point in the time stream. If he smelled ozone, he could step through to the future, but if he smelled the odor of blood and sweat, it was likely linked to a brutal time of war in the planet's history, and he didn't want a gladiator from the Trojan War or a knight from the Crusades to add to their pet caveman Curtis. "If I can find it before something crashes through it…."

There was a loud crash and a groan in the living room behind Pim as the four heads of the time-transplanted Diffy family turned round hesitantly to the source of the disaster. It was just out the corner of Barbara's eyes. It looked as if someone had fallen through a hole in the living room ceiling from the master bedroom upstairs above them. There was a sound of whooshing from the closing field sealing up the movement of air from two separate areas of space in two separate time periods. Pim looked to Phil and Phil looked to his father. Groaning and moaning in pain, the figure on the floor rose up grousing from the eight-foot drop that had dropped him through the floor of his home and into this Twenty-First Century home. He didn't look that far out of style for the time. He could have been yanked from the 1980s or even the 1970s, but he was definitely confused. He was possibly in his late thirties or early forties in age with the vigor of a mature man in his prime: a figure of normal height with dark hair and a mustache and goatee wearing a dark blue shirt and worn light blue jeans. Cracking his back and spine into place as he stood, he looked round the room with his back to the Diffy family behind and reacted to the modern family home with vague recollections of how he got here. Yet, why did this house look familiar?

"How did I get back here?" He asked himself and slowly turned around. When he saw the Diffy family looking at him, he froze in disbelief. Lloyd just twisted his face into his proud but cocksure face ready to introduce himself. Barbara hung by his side while Phil and Pim stood behind their father against the guest in their home.

"Hi," Lloyd reached forth slowly to start off on good terms with this guy. "I'm Lloyd, this is my lovely wife, Barb…."

"Hello…" Barbara responded graciously polite despite the awkwardness of the situation.

"And my kids Phil and Pim Diffy." Lloyd continued the introductions. "Welcome to my home, Mister……"

"Dad," The stranger spoke. "It's me…. Phil…."

"What?" Phil then realized the guy looked like his dad's younger brother, Weam, a relative he himself was supposed to resemble. Could this be himself from the future? Again?

"What?" Pim didn't want one brother, but now she him twice!

"Phil?" Barbara realized that a mother always knew her children regardless of where or how they appeared.

"What?" Lloyd looked to his teenage son, to the dimensional interface unit on the table, then to his son's adult counterpart yanked from out of twenty years into his future. Pim's head was reeling. Her eyes rolled back and she fell backward to the floor annoyed by the situation into a disgusted unconscious state.


	2. Chapter 2

PART TWO

If there was anything worse than having your son hover over you as you tried to work, it was having your son hovering over you twice. Lloyd grumbled, and rolled his eyes as the teenage son who had traveled back to this time with him, and the son that his present son was going to be, snatched from further into the future, moved over him and critiqued his efforts.

"Dad, you'd move a lot faster if you used two spanners." One Phil said.

"I was just about to say that!" The other Phil replied. "And don't you think he couldget a lot more done if he rechecked the anaharmonic field generator. I mean, I sure as heck wouldn't want to fire up the coils if they weren't aligned."

"Exactly!" Older Phil looked to his past self. "I'll just get the phase inducers and…."

"I broke it and I can fix it!" Lloyd screamed out from the pressure. Rubbing his brow upset, he looked at the nearly identical stunned glances of young Phil and older Phil and exhaled a deep breath. "I'm sorry, guys, but this is just one Phil too many."

"One Phil is too many." Pim groused sarcastically and looked upon the two counterparts of her brother.

"I'm sorry, dad…" Older Phil turned sympathetic and reacted more like a peer to his father. "But you got to get me home. Keely's going to worry about me if I'm not home in…"

"Phil!" Barbara spun round once more. "Are you and Keely married? Am I a grandma!"

"I didn't say that!" Older Phil reacted to the confrontation. "You didn't hear me say that!"

"Phil…" Barbara took her future son's face in her hands and looked into those big brown eyes. "This is just between me and you. Do I have any grandchildren to look forward to?"

"Please don't answer that!" Pim reeled a bit drunkenly and unsteady. "My stomach is tying in knots!" She tipped back a bottle of Pepto Bismo to her lips and began drinking it straight down until it was empty. She reached for another and began peeling off the plastic wrap to open it.

"This is just a theory, but judging from where in time it linked," Lloyd was re-building the dimensional interface unit. "I'd say the unit latched on to Phil's bio-harmonic field and reached forward to himself in the future until it was another degree off." He paused and chuckled impressed with himself. "Isn't science incredible?"

"Yeah," Phil looked to his future self. "Incredible."

"So, brother dear," Pim tried to sound as sugary sweet as possible. "Please tell me what I'm doing in the future; rich and powerful, I hope."

"I don't know."

"Phil," Barbara turned round to the discussion from washing the dinner dishes. "How can you **not** know what your sister is doing?"

"Mom," Adult Phil looked up to his younger mother. "You and dad don't know what she's doing. All we do know is that she's constantly arguing with someone through her cellular implant, the government's frozen her assets like a million times and when she does visit you, she's always wearing a disguise!"

Lloyd and Barbara turned looking back at Pim and recalled on several of her "conquer-the-world" rants and sighed in chorus with each other. On the spot, Pim looked at them both, her head turning stiffly to her father then her mother in worried and anxiety-driven looks of repressed guilt. Could it be that she was still driven to try and take over the world and that she would be public enemy number one all by the age of twenty?

"Who are you going to believe!" She denied her future deeds. "Me, your innocent and harmless little girl, or some would-be future clone of my idiot brother!"

"We're going to have to have a long talk, young lady!" Barbara shook her finger at Pim.

"So tell me…" Eighteen-year-old Phil looked to his forty-two year old self. "What's it like being married to Keely? Any surprises?"

"You know I can't tell you that."

"Why not?"

"Because back when I was sitting where you are and asked myself that question, I didn't tell myself either!" Adult Phil told his past self.

"Phil…."

"Yeah, dad?" Both Phils looked to their dad.

"Adult Phil…" Lloyd scooted the chair to his adult son. "Are you having spontaneous chronal memories of this incident?"

"Yeah," Adult Phil responded, placed aside the disconnected warp coil and leaned back in his seat. "It's weird, but they didn't start happening until a few minutes till I fell through the causality field. They're like, memories that I'm suddenly recalling. Even as I live through this, I'm simultaneously having flashbacks of the same thing from when I was eighteen and met myself from the future. It's like a reverse state of amnesia…."

"Phil," Lloyd reacted with restrained excitement. "Do you recall how you got back to the future? Did you drop me off in the future to bring back the component parts I need for the time machine? Did you get back?"

"I don't know." Adult Phil looked to himself as a young man. "I don't think I'm getting hit with the full breadth of the memories. I think they're only coming back as I live through them. Curtis is about to come in."

"Whoops!" Wearing his mammoth skin coverings, Curtis came in through the back door and quickly turned back. "Did not know have company…" He spoke in a stilted and raspy version based on his knowledge of the English language. As he turned back out to hide in the garage, he felt himself held back by something and looked back to a strange man he had never seen before keeping him from leaving.

"Curtis, I miss you so much, buddy." Adult Phil rose and hugged his old friend. Phil mugged proudly and Lloyd looked over to Barbara. Pim merely cringed at the disgusting display of devoted friendship.

"And Curtis miss you too…." He pretended to hug this man hugging him. "Who this?"

"Curtis, this is Phil." Lloyd tried to explain.

"No, that is Phil."

"Curtis, that's me from the future." Young Phil tried to explain.

"How Phil be from future when Phil be here?" Curtis's eyes rolled from one Phil to the other.

"Curtis," Adult Phil tried to explain. "Trust me, here. In time travel, it's possible for one person to visit himself in different parts of his life at any age possible. Even if it is against my will…"

"Curtis," Lloyd tried to explain the incident in a way the slow-thinker could comprehend. "Right now, our Phil is a young man, but some day he will an adult man and that is the Phil who is here with us."

"Are you sure?" Curtis was still trying to understand. "So, Phil…" He was reacting oddly cocksure for a caveman. "If you from future, is Curtis with you in that future?"

"Well, actually…" Adult Phil looked to his young self and once again disclosed future events. "We did take you to the Twenty-Second Century with us, despite nearly forgetting you, but you didn't like it there and we took you back to your own time. It was your own idea; you told us: 'Too many rules and explosions….' " He mimicked Curtis's voice. " 'Please return Curtis to own time.'" He started speakinin his own voice. "I do miss you, buddy, but Keely and I visit you every chance we got and bring the kids with us – OOOPS!" He had said too much again. "You guys didn't hear that,did you?" He looked this century's version of his family.

"Keely and I are going to have kids?" Young Phil reacted with surprise.

"Grandchildren! Yes!" Barbara cheered with a victorious dance around the kitchen table.

"No, no, no more bad news…." Pim was reeling. "Please tell me you didn't reproduce." She clutched her stomach. "Am I the only one who can taste the bile? I'm going to be really, really sick!"

"Phil…" Lloyd was getting desperate as he pulled back the man his son was going to be. "You got to tell me how I fixed the time machine so we can get home and drop you off as well."

"I can't, dad." Adult Phil looked at his younger father as a peer rather than his guardian. "We spent seven years living in the past before returning to the present. From what I can tell, I got yanked back only two years into those seven years, and considering all we did, I can't take the chance of altering that past at the risk of changing my present. You have the live out the full seven years in the Twenty-First Century so that my marriage to Keely will still exist when I return to her."


	3. Chapter 3

PART THREE

The two story tall façade of the marble and brick school that was H.G. Wells Junior High School reared up before future and present Phil Diffy. Older Phil started feeling introspective and nostalgic as he looked over the school and accompanied his younger counterpart up the front steps. It seemed like yesterday when he had been a young man stranded in this century and sent to school in those already outdated Seventies-era clothes by his father who had raced to faultily research this century. Pim had raced on ahead of them to be rid of her big brother and her older brother rather than be seen alongside either of them.

"I think I always subconsciously loved this time period." Middle-aged Phil Diffy had escorted his younger self to school. "The clothes, the technology, the culture…" Younger Phil looked to his older self as if he was a big brother rather himself plucked from the future. He thought he had aged well. He still had his hair, but he was obviously larger in size. His mustache was sort of sporty and kind of thin as it descended to an obvious goatee on his sharp chin. His arms were bigger, both muscular and brawny, and his chest as well as his abdomen had increased in age and as he noticed wrinkles on his older self's face, vanity forced him to insecurely check himself for traces of those wrinkles.

"This brings back so many memories…." Older Phil trudged on along side him. "Tanner, Seth…. you know, I haven't seen Tia since…"

"She moved away."

"Oh yeah…." Adult Phil sounded a bit disappointed. "Last time I saw her was in Boston with her cousin, London, the hotel heiress…."

Phil turned his head away as he heard a few chords of "The Suite Life with Zack and Cody" theme song echoing through his head. The two of them stood in the opening hallway of the school toward the main corridor going left and rights, two highways of students going past and around them, wandering, socializing and exploring. They were both tourists to the age. Young Phil experiencing the teenagers of this age, and older Phil re-examining the persons of his past from the view of nostalgia. A brief sigh, older Phil placed his arm on his younger self. "Look over there," He pointed to a blonde cheerleader at a water fountain. "In another year, Bridget's going to get you into trouble with Keely so keep on your toes."

"Really?"

"Yeah," Adult Phil rattled off a few more predictions. "And Chris Wright over there is going to sell you your first car, a lemon, and Dave Barr is going to smash into it on purpose and not pay for damages. Tina Scalf is going do something to break Keely's heart…"

"Should you be telling me this?"

"You want me to stop?"

"No!"

"Okay," Adult Phil continued spilling dirty and dire premonitions. "Kristy Whitney poses nude for Playboy, Darryl Hinton drops dead of an overdose during graduation, Lamar Short gets shot during a liquor store robbery a month after graduating, Tanner Fitzpatrick gets a football scholarship and loses it because of a bad knee and the Goth chick gets a recording contract from American Idol…" The future revelations were cut short by the bald assistant school principal breaking up a public show of affection between students Brad Hampton and Lily Munroe. "Hackett?" Adult Phil looked at his old principal. "I could have sworn he once had hair!"

"He's still alive in 2121?" Phil asked.

"No," Older Phil reacted. "But his great-grand-daughter is worse! She's a gym teacher!"

"What's she like?"

"Picture Hackett in a dress with boobs." They cringed disgustedly together.

"Picture who in a dress with what?" Keely Teslow glided up silently behind them. Stunned and surprised, both Phil's spun around in shock. She was looking incredible as usual. Her round blue eyes had a regal sparkle to them touched by the long strands of blonde hair framing her perfect features. Her purse and books over her left shoulder, she was clad in a form-fitting blue sweater outlining her thin frame and a pleated white skirt hanging down to just a foot off the school floor. Older Phil took a deep breath and fell in love with her all over again. To him, she hadn't changed a day. He started to move forward to embrace her as usual, but his teenage counterpart caught him and pressed him back.

"Keely, baby…" Older Phil started reaching to hold her and his younger self pulled him back to stop him. Keely had stepped back to avoid the contact, but then Phil flashed that everything's normal grin and she calmed down. Realizing he wasn't married at the moment, and uncomfortable with his wife's young self, he realized he wasn't a creep and kept himself back.

"Keely…" Young Phil reached into his mental bag of improvised excuses. "This is my… uncle. Uncle… Weam Diffy. He's a great guy!"

"He is?" Keely rolled her regal blue eyes nervously trying to figure this out. "So… he's from the future too? Does this mean you're going home?"

"Uh…." Two Phil's started looking for excuses to keep Keely from realizing the future. Other students wandered past them through the hall while they talked uninterested and unaware of the conversation.

"Actually," Adult Phil started talking. "My time machine only goes in one direction… the past. Yeah… I can get you an autograph from Xena the Warrior Princess."

"No, that's…" Keely started slowly and discreetly shaking her head as a Xena cry echoed through the firmament of her mind. "That's not necessary." Something wasn't right here, but she was sure Phil would tell her later if he told her at all.

"You know…" Older Phil beamed in love again upon seeing his wife as a teenager again. "Phil has told me a lot about you. He said you were beautiful…"

"He said I was beautiful?"

"Uncle Phil.. I mean, Uncle Weam…" Phil was reacting curiously confused. "What are you doing?"

"I've got an idea…" Adult Phil wanted his past self to score extra points in his relationship with his future wife. He took out his wallet and started pulling out cash. "Why don't you two get a pizza and catch a movie after school? I've got all this old money left over from the Eighties I've been trying to get rid of…"

"Uncle Weam…" Phil took away his wallet. "What are you doing? You don't have to do this."

"Actually, I'm free." Keely shined brightly. "I've got no plans and I've been trying to spend some quality time with Phil."

"I want to further your relationship with Keely…"

"You don't need to do this." Phil rolled his eyes and did a double take. "There's nothing wrong between Keely and I…"

"Phil…" Keely took the wallet from Phil to give back to his uncle. "Why are you doing this? Don't you want to spend time with me?"

"Of course, I want to, Keely…" Phil reacted embarrassed. "I just don't think we need his charity."

"It's not charity." Older Phil responded. "I want to encourage this relationship."

"Encourage it…" Teen Phil looked to his future self. "Or speed it along?"

"So, Mister Diffy…" Bald and suspicious Principal Neil Hackett had turned toward them from the throngs of students passing through the hall.

"Yes?" Both Phil's answered.

"Who is this gentleman with you?" Hackett continued curiously suspicious.

"Principal Hackett…" Keely had become quite adept with Phil in telling the truth and leaving out risky facts. "This is Phil's Uncle Weam."

"Oh…." Hackett looked over the slightly overweight and goateed figure. "Another… Diffy." He circled around the mature figure, and saw the overt resemblance to young Phil as they stared each other down. For as long as he knew the Diffys, Hackett felt they were either terrorists or extra-terrestrials in human form and as weird as things became around them, he was leaning more and more to the far-fetched explanation. "I know all about you, Diffys, and the weird stuff that happens around you. I'll be watching you, mister. Don't think that I don't know the score with you and the weird things around you."

"Oh yeah…" Phil had been rehearsing this little conversation for years in the back of his mind in order to throw Hackett off on his snooping of his family, but he had never gotten around to using it. This seemed like the best time. "You mean like my "brother" Lloyd trying to be a great inventor or my… sister-in-law creating gastronomic nightmares in trying to be a great cook…"

"Oh, yeah, that…" Hackett glanced to Phil then to his supposed uncle. "I guess that would explain a lot of the stuff I've seen…"

"Like my niece trying to conquer the world?" Adult Phil leaned into to his former principal and placed his arm around him as if they were finally colleagues. "She's going to be a problem some day." He whispered.

"Yeah….." Hackett believed he was getting juicy Diffy family secrets. Keely lightly giggled under breath, and Phil pretended to look away as Hackett's nosy bubble burst.

"But I'm so proud of my nephew Phil…" Adult Phil dropped his arm around his younger self and beamed over himself. "He's going to be a famous magician someday with the way he makes things levitate and appear out of no…."

"Uncle Weam, I think you're pushing it." Phil told his future self.

"What, uh, yeah, I maybe am…" They shared a secret look that Keely noticed and started wondering about it.

"Well," Hackett lightly took a deep breath. "Finally someone normal from the Diffy family tree who tells it like it is… You know, I'm in sudden need of a substitute. Could you fill in for me and cover one of the classes?"

"I'd love to!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Uncle Phil…I mean, Uncle Weam…" Phil started panicking and waving his arms. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"What could happen?" Adult Phil asked his younger self. A goofy grin later, the alleged "Weam Diffy" was walking off practically as Neil Hackett's new best friend. Keely leaned over to Phil a bit and narrowed her eyes to the mysterious uncle then to Phil.

"Phil," Her voice responded low and a bit breathy. "Why are you so antagonistic to your uncle? I mean, you two look so much alike, I'd have thought you were close." She grew curious. "What's the real truth here?"

"I can't tell you, Keely." Phil reacted apologetic and sorrowful. "But this time I really can't tell you."

"Why not?" She looked back to see how far the alleged uncle was then back to Phil. "He's not really your uncle, is he?" She guessed, her left eyebrow arching to hear another delicious fact.

"Keely," Phil looked at her eager to tell the truth. "I can't tell you this time."

"Oh, o… kay." She forced herself to accept it. "I guess it involves some sort space-time thing…"

"Kind of…"

"Okay, I can accept that." Her eyes panned slightly depressed to the floor then realized what she still possessed. She realized she still had the man's wallet. "I've still got your uncle's wallet. Maybe there's something embarrassing in it!" She turned away to look in it.

"What, oh, I'll just take…." Phil eagerly and quickly tried to take it. He barely had it before she overwhelmingly curiously yanked it back away from him, but then she saw things that sparked her interest. It was something she saw… a holographic video identification card for a person named Philip Weam Diffy from the future and another for the 1990s. That wasn't unusual at first considering that family names repeating through relatives, but then she saw a picture of herself and Phil in graduation gowns, and under that a picture of herself a bit older wearing a college t-shirt, and under that one a picture of herself, a bit older and in a hospital bed beaming ear to ear and holding a newborn baby. She looked nervously to Phil trying to wrestle the wallet from her fingers. Gritting his teeth fearfully, he just knew he did not want her to see those pictures. Even as Phil finally snatched the wallet from her, Keely knew somehow that Uncle Weam was not who she had been told he was.

"Phil…." She nervously tossed her long golden locks aside for the moment. "Why does your uncle have pictures of me? Of me and you together? I never posed those pictures! Whose baby is that? Who is your uncle, really?"

"Well," Phil chuckled as if it was a joke. "Well, he's certainly not me from our future!" He grinned trying to conceal the truth, but Keely knew Phil better than that. It was then that he realized like his future counterpart that he a big mouth and talked too much. With a faint breath coming up out of her lungs, and the realization she had seen her future, her eyes rolled back and she fainted from the massive realization hitting her brain at once. Phil quickly caught her head lolling back to his shoulder and held on to her in his arms.

"Something tells me that I could have phrased that differently." He told himself.

"Class…" Hackett walked into Messerschmidt's first period science class. "I've got some bad news for you, but Mr. Messerschmidt had to leave early. It seems he came down with a sudden case of food poisoning."

Sitting in a desk in the front row, Pim Diffy turned and victoriously slapped and high-fived her hand into Danny Dawkins' left hand as if they had been a part of it. Bradley Farmer behind them was grinning ear to ear.

"All is not lost…" Hackett continued. "You won't miss your science test after all because I found you a substitute. Everyone welcome, Pim and Phil's Uncle Weam Diffy!"

"Hey kids," Adult Phil walked in grinning ear to ear. "Welcome to the wonderful world of science!"

"He's everywhere." In the front row of seats, Pim suddenly groaned. "I can't get away from him, he's everywhere!" Her scream exploded from her lips and filled the school.


	4. Chapter 4

PART FOUR

Keely pressed against the gate to the Diffy backyard slowly and walked forward delicately treading the grass out of respect to unknown objects in her path. She was nervous about the Diffy family guest and what he meant to her and her future. He was almost a living crystal ball into her future as if it was all already set in stone. Maybe it had all already happened, to him, and if she did something to change things here in the now, it might all never happen. Expectations and nervous tension played on her senses as she lightly glided into view and looked up to the sounds of competition before her. Ahead of her, Phil and his future counterpart were playing a game of laser ball. Younger Phil had the youth and strength, but the older Phil had experience and ability to predict his young counterpart's moves.

"I seem to be slowing down in my old age." Phil observed about his future self.

"I'm not that old!" Older Phil corrected him.

"Who's winning?" Keely asked.

"No one…" Younger Phil answered. "We can't seem to get a point off each other."

"I guess…" Older Phil looked to his young self and caught the glowing orb in his hand that he'd been bouncing back and forth with his young counterpart. "You two will want to be alone. I just never knew my nephew had such a beautiful girlfriend." He began beaming a steely sort of Hollywood actor grin.

"She knows." Younger Phil replied matter-of-factly.

"She knows?"

"I know." Keely added.

"She knows." Teenage Phil replied.

"She knows…." Adult Phil furrowed his brow worriedly. "That can't be good." He then flashed upon times his wife the investigative reporter always guessed what he'd been up to. Whether he was out horsing around or staying out late, she always knew. It wasn't that far to realize that young Keely was just as intelligent now as she was in the future.

"Phil," Keely reacted demurely uncomfortable. "Can we talk… alone?"

"Yeah, sure." Adult Phil set his laser-ball paddle and the ball aside. "I'll just go see what dad is doing in the…"

"No, I mean with you." Keely looked up partially hidden by her long blonde locks.

"With him?" Young Phil wasn't sure if he should be jealous.

"With me?"

"With him." Keely confirmed.

"With him." Young Phil confirmed. "This can't be good." He forced himself to turn round and walk into the house in a self-induced shock. He looked back a few times until he was all the way into the house. In the back yard, Keely lifted her head and beamed ear to ear once more then frowned uncomfortably. She and her future husband walked circles around each other briefly as if they were pairing each other out.

"I guess I'm a bit of a disappointment." Adult Phil forced a mild grin. "I didn't age very well." His hand insecurely rubbed his round abdomen. "At least, we have several good meals together." He stepped back and sat down on the steps of the wood deck.

"So," Keely lightly pulled her hair back and sat a few feet from him. "You took me to the future with you?"

"Well….. Not really…" Adult Phil looked away with a smirk. "Actually, you stayed behind and I visited you ever so often as much as I could, but when my parents started fighting, I realized that they were so much more closer when they lived in the past, you know, here at the turn of the Twenty-First Century and they decided to retire here. They've never been happier and I came with them, and stayed this time."

"Pim too?"

"Pim got into major trouble in our time for tapping into the world banking system and was exiled to the past with us." Adult Phil continued. "You know Mrs. Mip, the sub, that's Pim."

"So that's why she calls me blondie!" Keely had a revelation, dropped her jaw and lightly shook her head. She looked back to Phil beaming a bit. "And we got together and lived happily ever after, right."

"Well, you kind of suspected it, right?" Adult Phil looked at his wife's younger self with an awkward attraction realizing how young she was compared to him. "Remember when you used the Giggle and saw yourself with the wedding ring. You kind of knew, right?"

"I guess I did…" Keely smirked a bit embarrassed, looked away briefly and regally turned her head back. She looked to Phil's future self a bit reticent and demure. "Why didn't you ever tell me you were in love with me?"

"I don't know." He looked back at her and wanted to hold her, but forced himself to hold back. "I guess I was too scared to. Keely, you were one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen. I mean, before I met you, even in the Twenty-Second Century girls like you never wanted anything to do with me, but when you confronted me, and we actually became friends… to have you as my best friend, that was more than I could I ask for. It was one of the greatest things to ever happen in my life. I couldn't risk losing that by becoming your boyfriend, but…. Let me tell, you - if I knew then, what I know now, I would have risked it. We became so much more closer afterward…"

"I'm glad…" She abashedly grinned to herself. "So, am I happy? Am I working? Please tell me I have a career!"

"One hundred and third utterance of Keely Diffy." An electronic Wizard from the future was recording for Phil every time his wife said that.

"Yeah, you have a career…" Adult Phil smirked amusingly and fumbled with his Wizard. "I mean, you're going to have a hard time ahead, and I think you only agreed to marry me when you thought your life was going no where, but, believe me, it's a long hard road ahead for you, but the journey's going to be so worth it."

"I got it! I got it!" Lloyd Diffy came charging from the side door of the garage while enveloped in a puff of smoke. With his screams of delighted hysteria, younger Phil also ran from the house with his mother. Adult Phil and Keely stood up from their seats. Behind them, Pim stayed behind and leaned into the patio doors tossing away an empty bottle of Pepto-Bismol and opening another to lift to her lips. This extra big brother business was twisting her stomach into knots.

"I finally got the dual trans-temporal phase alignment to align with the dimensional interface unit." Lloyd excitedly told his extended family. "I'm this close to fixing the time machine!"

"Two hundred and ninety-third utterance by Lloyd Diffy…." Older Phil's Wizard chirped as he switched it off.

"Hundred and twenty-seventh utterance by Lloyd Diffy." Younger Phil's Wizard chirped as well as he and his adult self looked at each other. Lloyd just looked to the two counterparts of his smart aleck son and rolled his eyes disgustedly toward them.

"This weekend," Lloyd continued. "We are going home, and dropping you off." He looked to his adult son shaking his head skeptically. "And stop shaking your head!"

"Three, two, one…" Adult Phil had already lived through this incident when he had lived with his future counterpart. He covered his ears and something exploded in the garage with a flash of light and gray smoke. As the smoke began dissipating, everyone started coughing and Barbara began waving the air to see what was going on around her. Young Phil started patting Keely on the back to help her get the smoke out of her lungs.

"Five more years, Dad." Adult Phil continued predicting. "We were in the past for seven years, no more, no less."

"Stop telling me that!" Lloyd ordered him.

"What was that explosion!" Hackett reminded the Diffys that he was still their next-door neighbor and looked over the fence with wanton unbridled curiosity. As the Diffys tried to think of a logical excuse, Phil's future self once more exercised his talent for improvised excuses.

"Well," Adult Phil trekked over and looked at Hackett over the fence. "Let me put it like this, I told my brother years ago that merging the microwave and the dishwasher was a bad idea." He covered for his father before Hackett. "But does he listen…."


	5. Chapter 5

PART FIVE

"I bet we had a nice wedding." Keely beamed to Phil across the Scrabble board on the coffee table.

"Don't go planning it now." Young Phil looked at her. "We're not dating yet." He placed a word on the board. "Schribism." He spelled a new word.

"Challenge." Keely didn't recognize that term.

"Schribism." Adult Phil leaned over them briefly and sat down nearby on the sofa. "The practice of purposely or accidentally creating alternate timelines through the use of time travel; first coined by Professor Seymour Schrib in 2076 after he discovered an alternate reality of the Earth where apes ruled the planet…"

"New rule," Keely looked up disgustedly. "No more words from the future on the board, take it off."

"How about tatellate?" Young Phil looked up a bit upset. "A smaller version of a tatell."

"No more future words." Keely was adamant. She looked to her future husband. "So, how are you getting home to the future?"

"I'm just waiting for my ride." Adult Phil was stuck making modern words like 'cat' and 'dog' from his Scrabble tiles while perfectly good words like "togat" and "actiod" went by unused.

"Your ride?" Barbara Diffy stopped from where she was and looked to her future heirs.

"Like I said," Adult Phil replied. "I do remember meeting my future counterpart when I was eighteen, and how he got home, but I can't recall how long he stayed."

"Is he still here?" Pim came down the staircase carrying a half-empty bottle of Pepto-Bismol. She chugged from it again, made a face of dire nausea and hugged her mother for relief. Both Phil's and Keely noticed and made a note of Pim's uncomfortable demeanor in the presence of her extra brother. Looking back to Keely, Phil lifted one eyebrow covertly and then leaned across to his fake uncle and whispered a question to his ear. Adult Phil looked at Keely and whispered something back to his younger self with his hands secretly posturing before his chest.

"What did you just ask him?" Keely wanted to know. "Are you asking him about my body in the future?"

"Where did you get that idea?" Adult Phil answered evadingly. "He just wanted to know what I'm doing in the future."

"Yep…" Phil smirked a bit connivingly. "I'm going to be a…."

"Authority on life at the turn of the Twenty-First Century at the museum…." Adult Phil revealed. "Specializing in people and events in the 1970s through the 1990s." He paused as he spelled another word on the Scrabble board. "I also own a string of 1990s-themed restraunts." He grinned quite proud of himself. "It's a good life."

"You better be telling the truth, mister or else you'll be in so much trouble when you get home." Keely adorably snarled at her future husband as one Phil looked to the other.

"I found the problem." Lloyd entered the house once more carrying the dimensional interface unit, which had brought his future son to this time. "The temporal drive energizer is rejecting the modifications I made to the dimensional interface unit. It's just taking too much power. I think I need to overhaul the flex capacitor to adjust for the increased outage."

"You'll get it sooner or later, dad." Adult Phil nonchalantly sat playing Scrabble.

"When?" Pim grabbed Future Phil's head and turned him to face her. "When!"

"Sis," Adult Phil straightened his neck. "I'd be careful about which futures you visit. With your access to time machines, there's outstanding warrants for you all the way back to the Iron Age." Curtis walked through the house for the back door. "The Stone Age too probably."

Barbara turned her head up to the rapping noise at the front door. A brief moment for Lloyd to put a lampshade on the dimensional interface unit to disguise it as an ugly lamp to the people of this century, Barbara twisted the old fashioned door knob and looked to the lovely young lady at the door. She almost resembled Keely with long dark hair. They both had those open regal blue eyes, perfectly sculpted facial features and an ideal teenage figure for a young girl. Clad in a gold blouse with dark blue Capri pants, she looked round distractedly, looked up to Barbara and squealed in a high-pitched voice.

"Scuse me, but I'm looking for… Grandma!" She seemed to suddenly recognize Barbara, bounced up and affectionately squeezed Barbara closely.

"Lloyd!"

"Tricia?" Adult Phil slid up and pulled his daughter from his mother's past self. "Princess, how'd you get here?"

"Well," The eighteen-year-old girl effervescently posed on the back stoop. "Mom started screaming that you forgot to pick her up again from the video station and sent me, Cathy and Lisa to look for you. When the world scan didn't find you, I figured you traveled back in time to see grandma and grandpa so I hopped in the time sled and honed in on the microchip mom had implanted in the back of your neck to keep track of you."

"What!" Both Phil's reached in shock to the back of their necks and looked in perfect unison at Keely. Maybe she was apt to being a bit controlling and didn't know it.

"Oh, Lloyd…." Barbara was once more getting misty-eyed while she turned Tricia around to look her over. "Our granddaughter is beautiful!" A few feet away, Keely lowered her head a bit and her lower jaw as well at the daughter she was fated to have.

"She sure is." Lloyd was beaming over this visage of the future. "I think I even see a trace of the Diffy sparkle in her."

"Maybe she'll outgrow that when she gets older." Keely stood from where she sat on the floor.

"Where are the antacids?" Pim was searching the kitchen cabinets. "My stomach can't take much more of this!"

"Aunt Pimmy," Tricia looked over to her aunt's young counterpart. "Wow, I didn't know you once fat…"

That was the wrong thing to say. A growling noise came from Pim's throat and her eyes seared with anger. Tightening her fingers into claws, she lunged forward held back by her current brother and father while her future brother stood to protect his daughter from her young aunt.

"My ride's here!" Adult Phil was gently pushing his daughter out the back door. "Keely, I'll be home in a few seconds."

"I'll miss you!" Keely called out.

"I'm right here." Phil turned his head to her.

"Wasn't I a good looking guy?" Adult Phil asked his teenaged daughter hurriedly out the door.

"Yeah, right, dad…." Tricia bemoaned her father's vanity.

"Oh, Lloyd…" Barbara was missing the man her son was going to be. "I'm going to have to wait twenty-five years to see them again."

"Mom, I'm right here." Young Phil looked to her.

"Yeah, I just wish I could have got a ride for some spare parts." Lloyd turned round frustratedly. "Five more years, Barb. You heard him. Five more years here, I don't know how I'm going to…" He noticed Pim with a kitchen knife. "Pim, you're not going after Phil with that, are you?"

"Why, of course, not, daddy…" Pim sounded sweet and harmless. "I'm keeping the blonde from having kids!"

A furious fracas of crashes and things getting broken combined with Phil's screams protecting Keely in the Diffy house distracted Neil Hackett as he watered his rose bushes. Wondering what was happening in the Diffy household, forty-two-year old Phil Diffy hovered unseen behind him in a silver time-sled with his teenage daughter clutching his back. She poked fun a moment at the balding principal and heard her teenage mother screaming in the house below. A hum of electro-magnetic energy shielded the two from the friction in the air as the flex capacitor charged and opened a causality field large enough to jump through to their time in the future. The on-board computer modified their settings for the exact coordinates in the time-stream, and back-up systems adjusted to protect the travelers.

"Princess," Adult Phil mimicked Doctor Emmett Brown, the inventor of the first time machine prototype. "Back to the Future!" The resulting flash of light from the anti-gravity generator filled the air while Hackett turned from the screams in the Diffy house to the direction of the now empty space behind him. For a brief second, he thought he had seen a flying craft with Phil's uncle and a young girl on it. Shrugging it off, he started wondering if he was ever going to understand that family.

END

CAST- Amanda Michalka as Tricia Diffy


End file.
